Labour abuse is seafood’s hidden cost

The most disturbing stories from fishing vessels reach the public as scenes of cruelty. A fisher is trapped at sea for months or years. Wages disappear. Passports are confiscated. A crew member is beaten, denied medical care, abandoned in a foreign port.

Public blame often centres on an outlaw vessel, an abusive captain, a corrupt company. Then everyone moves on, until the next scandal appears.

In 2015, the world was shocked by reports of enslaved fishers on Thai vessels. Yet, a decade later, not nearly enough has changed. That is what we found in our recent review of 51 peer-reviewed studies on labour exploitation in global fisheries.

We also found that abuse is not a series of scandals. It is a structural feature of how the global seafood economy operates, driven by overfishing and competitive market pressures, enabled by weak governance and sustained by the strategic use of migrant labour. The solutions that have received the most attention, including ecolabels, certification schemes and voluntary corporate pledges, are still failing many of the workers they claim to protect.

This matters because any solution depends on how the problem is understood.

If labour abuse is treated as an occasional scandal, the response will focus on catching bad actors after harm has already occurred. But if abuse is understood as a structural feature of the seafood economy, then governments, companies, markets, fisheries managers and regional fisheries management organisations (RFMOs) must confront the conditions that make it possible in the first place.

These conditions are not mysterious. Many fishing operations now work under severe economic pressure, with declining catches, rising costs and intense competition pushing vessels to fish farther and longer. At the same time, global markets continue to demand cheap seafood. The pressure to reduce costs is constant and labour is often the easiest cost to push down.

The machinery of control

For workers, the reduction can mean stolen wages, excessive hours, unsafe vessels, poor food, lack of rest, intimidation, debt and limited access to medical care.

For those recruited into fishing away from their home nations, the risks are even greater. Many such migrant fishers enter the sector through brokers or recruitment agencies. Some begin their journeys already in debt. Others sign contracts they cannot fully understand or later discover that the terms have changed. Once at sea, their documents can be confiscated, while their legal statuses, language barriers, and isolation can make leaving almost impossible.

Fishers such as those on this Philippine purse seiner often have little leverage against the systems that could exploit them (Image: © Alex Hofford / Greenpeace)

The ocean itself becomes part of the machinery of control. A worker on land may be able to escape an abusive employer. A worker on a distant water fishing vessel cannot just walk away.

This is why the language of modern slavery, while powerful, can also be limiting. It captures the horror of extreme abuse, but it can make exploitation appear rare and exceptional. Many fishers experience conditions that do not fit the legal definitions of forced labour yet remain deeply coercive. A fisher may not be chained but may still be trapped by debt. They may not be formally imprisoned but may have no realistic way to exit. They may be described as free, while every material condition suggests otherwise.

Recognising this spectrum of abuse allows us to identify and denounce exploitation before it reaches its most extreme form. It also helps to avoid the comforting fiction that only the most egregious cases deserve attention.

Illegal links

Labour abuse and illegal fishing are usually treated as separate policy problems. One is a human rights issue; the other is a fisheries management issue. In practice, they often share the same origins.

A vessel that avoids fisheries rules may also avoid labour rules. Weak monitoring, complex ownership, transshipment at sea, distant operations and poor inspection systems create space for illegal fishing and worker abuse to occur simultaneously.

In some cases, exploited fishers may be forced to participate in illegal practices they did not choose. They then become both victims of abuse and potential targets of enforcement. That is a profound failure of justice.

This means labour protection is not separate from ocean sustainability. A seafood system that exploits workers is more likely to undermine the marine environment. There is no truly sustainable seafood built on human suffering.

Global blind spots

Another important finding from our work is that the world does not know enough about where this labour exploitation is happening.

Much existing research is concentrated in Southeast and East Asia, especially around Thailand, Taiwan, Indonesia, Cambodia, the Philippines, Myanmar and South Korea. This focus is understandable; investigative journalists, civil society groups and researchers have exposed serious abuses in this region.

But the danger is that the public begins to imagine labour exploitation as mainly an Asian problem. It is not.

Large parts of the Atlantic, Africa, the Americas, the Indian Ocean and other major fishing regions remain poorly studied in the English-language academic literature, even though research on the Gulf of Guinea shows how illegal fishing can undermine livelihoods, food security and sustainable development.

Some powerful fishing nations and fleets remain remarkably difficult to examine.

This silence is troubling. It means that the geography of research may be shaping the geography of outrage. Academics and journalists watch some regions closely, while labour abuse in others remains hidden in plain sight.

Who should take action?

For policymakers, the implication is clear. Labour standards must be built into fisheries governance, not tacked on as a social concern. Fisheries management must focus on more than fish stocks, catch limits, vessels, gear and trade. A fishery cannot be called well-managed if the people working in it are abused. Port inspections should include safe and confidential ways for fishers to report abuse. Vessel licensing should be tied to labour protections.

RFMOs, often criticised for weaknesses in high seas fisheries governance, should stop treating labour as someone else’s responsibility. If RFMOs regulate access to fishing, they also have a role in ensuring that access is not built on coercion.

For companies and buyers, voluntary promises are no longer enough. Too often, seafood companies have invested more energy in tracing fish than in protecting the fishers whose labour brought that fish to market. Codes of conduct, certification schemes and audits can raise awareness, but they cannot replace binding accountability. Paperwork is not a substitute for protection. The real test is not whether consultants can produce a clean supply chain report. It is whether fishers are paid, safe, heard and able to leave abusive work without punishment.

For journalists and civil society, the challenge is about framing. Individual stories remain essential. They give the public a human face to a hidden crisis. But those stories should not end with a profile of the outlaw of the week. They should ask: what conditions made the abuse possible? Who profited from it? Which rules failed? Which markets rewarded it? Which inspection systems missed it?

Most importantly, fishers themselves must be placed at the centre of reform. Much more than just victims, they are workers, rights holders, organisers, knowledge holders and witnesses to the daily realities of the sea. Policies designed without their voices will continue to miss the structures and processes that shape their exploitation.

The seafood industry has spent years telling the world that sustainability matters. But sustainability does not stop at the waterline. It is not enough to protect fish while ignoring the people who catch them. It is not enough to celebrate responsible seafood while tolerating stolen wages, fear, injury and abandonment.

The next time a labour abuse story emerges from a fishing vessel, we should not treat it as an isolated tragedy. We should treat it as evidence of a wider system that has resisted change.